D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[GothicEmperor]

I think it's a little more complex than that. I think D&D orcs are first defined by the desire to tell the kind of stories that a lot of writers grew up with, i.e Western ones with cowboys and indians and the like. That doesn't mean that Orcs were based on Indigenous Americans, but rather they were created to fill the same structural narrative role.

Yeah, That's probably more accurate. As a European it's really interesting to see how DnD puts an American spin on fantasy tropes, even when it borrows from Tolkien and other more European fantasy/folklore. (Not to say that anything is necessarily better; obviously Tolkien has his own biases) Its something you could write a book about, honestly.

 

[Zardnaar]

I identify as British myself, living in England. My father is Scottish and my mother Northern and I find the idea of being "English" somewhat perplexing. In part this is because "English" identity has historically been defined in ways that tend to exclude or denigrate the North (one might argue this continues to this day).

I identify as a kiwi. It sounds nicer than Anglo Saxon colonial mutt.

Once you're getting into grandparents range it's a bit silly to identify as the old country imho ymmv

My heritage is mostly Scottish/Welsh but it would be daft to claim one if them since my great great grandparents got off the boat in 1880.

Some of the food still lingering around though.

 

[pemerton]

Yes. Although Aristotle in the Politics writes:

" others however maintain that for one man to be another man's master is contrary to nature, because it is only convention that makes the one a slave and the other a freeman and there is no difference between them by nature, and that therefore it is unjust, for it is based on force."

Which seems to indicate that the idea that slavery as a whole was wrong was not entirely unthinkable in the ancient world. (Aristotle unfortunately argues against the above proposition).

That's a misreading of Aristotle, I think. The fact that something is "contrary to nature" would show it to be conventional, but that doesn't entail that it is wrong. Aristotle, of course, had reasons within his own system to argue that slavery was natural rather than conventional as part of its defence, but not all thinkers he was engaging with and responding to shared his system.

 

[Mordhau]

That's a misreading of Aristotle, I think. The fact that something is "contrary to nature" would show it to be conventional, but that doesn't entail that it is wrong. Aristotle, of course, had reasons within his own system to argue that slavery was natural rather than conventional as part of its defence, but not all thinkers he was engaging with and responding to shared his system.

"therefore it is unjust, for it is based on force.".

I don't see how it can be a misreading unless there's a mistranslation. I'm not sure how otherwise you can read it as saying anything other than some people may believe that slavery is unjust.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

"therefore it is unjust, for it is based on force.".

I don't see how it can be a misreading unless there's a mistranslation. I'm not sure how otherwise you can read it as saying anything other than some people may believe that slavery is unjust.

You're definitely not misreading it.

 

[pemerton]

Finley, AFAIK, is just an example of the problem I discussed above. We only have upper-class and elite opinions on slavery and is itself rather outdated, given it's from before I was born and I'm old. Sources, translations, and archaeology have changed a lot since then.

Claiming to know what Spartacus was after in detail is pretty silly. It's been in the interest of elites to cast Spartacus as selfishly motivated for a very long time, and indeed during the cold war, failing to do so lead to suspicions of Communist sympathies, because a great number of Communist organisations used Spartacus's name and invoked him. So you see this hilarious spike in "Spartacus was just trying to flee!" stuff from the 60s through the 80s.

Finley was a Marxist, or in the vicinity, so I don't think was motivated by "upper class" sympathies. His critique of the ideological defences of classical slavery remains quite powerful in my view.

My views on Spartacus are also influenced by Raymond Geuss, who I would describe as a leading Marx scholar and not known for his right-wing or upper class sympathies.

The point is not to criticise (or praise) Spartacus, but rather to appreciate that what ideas are available to a given person depends upon their historical and social location. This is also true for contemporary people.

 

[el-remmen]

Are you the author of the Lifedeath essays I found linked to on that site? In which case, thank you. I just read them and they are very sensitive readings, in both their praise and their criticism, of some of the best moments of Claremont X-Men.

EDIT: To tie this back to the thread topic, I'm not aware of anything from TSR or WotC that approaches those comics in terms of its attempt to grapple with questions of identity and cultural power. (I think you are correct to say that the comics ultimately fail to grapple with questions of political and economic power.)

I am. And thank you. I worked hard on those essays but I hope to return to them some day to expand and develop them.

 

[Umbran]

I agree with all of this but I think there's a distinction between someone who primarily acts and identifies as one culture (American) and whose last Scottish ancestor was 200 years ago, and indeed may be equally descended from Germans or whatever, who sometimes identifies as Scottish, and between some who actually lives in Scotland and is primarily Scottish, culturally. I don't doubt their feeling of connection, but it's not really the same thing.

None of it makes a whit of sense from the point of view of genetics anyway. Two people born of German (or any European ancestry) can easily be more genetically different from each other than from, say, a person of African descent. That person whose last Scottish ancestor was 200 years ago may be more genetically similar to your still-in-Scotland Scottish neighbor than you are.

Given how much everyone's culture has changed in the past 200 years, either one of you claiming a close cultural tie to some Scot from 1821 seems... a bit dubious, no? But, to tell the difference between you, we are going to use some claim on "continuity", whether or not that indicates any particular similarity?

Who here expect this to devolve into a "no true Scotsman" argument?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Who here expect this to devolve into a "no true Scotsman" argument?

Gonna be honest, I was watching it dance around it for a while now but never thought it would tip in.

 

[Yaarel]

I think it's a little more complex than that. I think D&D orcs are first defined by the desire to tell the kind of stories that a lot of writers grew up with, i.e Western ones with cowboys and indians and the like. That doesn't mean that Orcs were based on Indigenous Americans, but rather they drifted to fill the same structural narrative role.

Now of course, when you do that, people will recognise the narrative and start filling the details back in.

Because the D&D orcs are a "race", American tropes tend to play them out as Native Americans, conceived as a race. In GAZ10, the tropes and connotations play out overtly as "red orcs".

D&D traditions seem most likely to go wrong while misrepresenting "primitive" "tribal" "savages".